Letter: Smoking marijuana is not medicine

I started practicing family medicine in 1988 and began specializing in addiction treatment a year later. I stand with thousands of physicians across our country and around the world who know that smoking marijuana is not medicine.

The medical marijuana industry seems to be nothing more than the drug-legalization movement cloaking itself under the guise of responsible, compassionate health care. The people behind medical marijuana — including some Illinois legislators like Rep. Lou Lang, a Democrat from Skokie — are misguided about what responsible medicine is.

It is apparent that the legislators for legalization of medical marijuana are minimizing the potential harm to public health and safety (especially in troubled neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side, where I have devoted much of my life and work).

Is it possible that they are far more interested in the millions of dollars that stand to line pockets and political coffers? Is that money why they feel qualified to tell the nation’s medical community — including the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Society — that they know best?

People who need alternative therapies for pain relief and other symptoms associated with end-stage illness have plenty of options that don’t require them to smoke. Those options should be determined by patients and their reputable health-care providers, not Illinois legislators.

I urge more physicians to stand up to the medical-marijuana industry and the drug-legalization movement and to refuse to allow responsible medicine to be compromised by them. I also urge Illinoisans to contact their legislators and insist that they just say no to Rep. Lang and his latest medical marijuana proposal, SB 1381.

Dora Dixie, M.D.
Immediate past president
of the Illinois Society
of Addiction Medicine
Chicago

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